FOR ALL STUDIOUS AND CURIOUS PERSONS

If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth?

Virginia Woolf, A Room  of One’s Own 

When the British Museum first opened its doors to the public on 15 January 1759, it was housed in a seventeenth-century mansion, Montague House, in Bloomsbury on the site of today’s building. Entry was free and given to ‘all studious and curious persons’.

Today, 255 years later, I was one of the very last visitors to leave at closing time. I offer here a pithy reflection to mark this particular milestone in the Museum’s history.

The original proposed ticket for admission to view the Museum’s
collection, located in the Trustees Original Papers of 1757.

Postscript

Don’t miss Part Two of ‘To Make a Beginning’, published earlier today.